


smaller than all other seeds

by SearchingforSerendipity



Series: the gardener and the apple thief [1]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Apple of Knowledge, Bird Symbolism, Demon!Aziraphale, Gardening, M/M, angel!Crowley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-02
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-05-24 09:30:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6149098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingforSerendipity/pseuds/SearchingforSerendipity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crowley smiled, sly. "Yesss, I imagine you would have more use for talonsss. Better at grasping thingsss."</p><p>"Oh, don't you start already, dear. I say, you steal one Apple Of Knowledge once and suddenly everyone thinks you are a thief."</p><p> </p><p>A demon and an angel, falling sideways and switching places.</p>
            </blockquote>





	smaller than all other seeds

Matthew 13:32

 _"_ [...] _and this is smaller than all other seeds, but when it is full grown, it is larger than the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that THE BIRDS OF THE AIR come and NEST IN ITS BRANCHES."_

 

 

There were many professional gardeners in London, devoted souls who made digging into an art, but none of their creations were on par with The Garden Serpent's.

Several well meaning individuals had asked the owner if he didn't mean The Garden Snake, but Mr. Crowley was must determined. Snakes, he said, were not the same as serpents, and misnaming them would be almost as bad as mistaking a peony for a dahlia. He said this to live up to his reputation of eccentric gardener, but mostly because he really liked serpents.

Situated in a ridiculously expensive corner of Mayfair, The Garden Serpent was open everyday of the week, except weekends, because the owner had never quite decided which day counted as Sabbath. His free mornings were for pruning, ploughing, crooning to the saplings, doing whatever chores were there to be done in his cramped glasshouse and generally putting the love of Crowley into the plants.

Often he was involved in the parties where his flower arrangements out shined bride, groom and bridesmaids. Im a curious string of coincidences, all the weddings he went to ended in long successful marriages, and when they returned to Mr. Crowley for baptism bouquets, the children always turned out to be nature lovers. Some, the ones he liked best, grew up to lisp their 'esses'.

But whatever happened, every Sunday Mr. Crowley adjusted the last bouquet, sprinkled some more of his special water essence in his prize blooms and went out for what his companion would call a constitutional. The pristine white Bentley warranted many admiring looks in the road. Besides its age and speed, it was rare to find any car with charisma enough to pull off white painting. Mr. Crowley, who owned something like a dozen similar, tailored white suits, was the exception to a similar rule.

He parked in the same miraculously open space that had been his since there had been a parking lot and got out of the car.

"Lovely weather we are having." His companion said, looking up from the Nora Roberts book Crowley knew for a fact was a centuries old grimoire. He scooted over to make space for Crowley.

Crowley looked up at the sleets of grey clouds above. "Eh. Could be worse."

"I heard on the radio it's going to rain."

"The radio, is it? That's an improvement. Weren't you still learning to use the telegraph?"

"I'll have you know I'm proficient in telegraphy. Lingur and Hastur have asked me to give them lessons."

"Bad to know your kind is coming into the twentieth century, demon. Maybe by 2000 you'll have figured out television."

The grimoire-reading man didn't look like a demon. He did look like someone who would read a Nora Roberts book, lose it in the train, buy another and recommend it to all his friends at the local book club in the church's basement. Dressed in an hellishly checkered pullover [1] and comfortable kakis, he peered at the world from thick glasses with curious rims. Sometimes the eyes behind the lenses glinted gold, but that was probably just a trick of the light.

Nothing about his screamed Wraith of the Depths, unless you counted his reaction to damaged books. [2]

On the other hand, Crowley. For someone who made a living out of gardening he was remarkably clean, mostly for the benefit of the Bentley, except for his fingernails.

"Really, dear. You should take better care of your cuticles." His companion said, Gracelessly changing the subject.

Crowley might have rolled his eyes. It was difficult to be sure, behind his dark shades. "Not all of us have talons, demon. Terribly impractical ssstuff."

His companion's mouth puckered in disagreement. "I'll have you know my talons are perfectly useful," he held up his soft manicured hands as proof. "Certainly more practical than having no hands at all."

Crowley smiled, sly. "Yesss, I imagine you would have more use for talonsss. Better at grasping thingsss."

"Oh, don't you start already, dear. I say, you steal _one_  Apple Of Knowledge once and suddenly everyone thinks you are a thief."

By silent agreement they got up and started the rounds around the pond. Some enterprising pigeons ventured forwards in the search for crumbs. Crowley took out the bread out of his pocket, casting an amused smile at the demon's attempt to look forbidding while pelting the birds with the dregs of an old scone. 

"No, they think you are a thief because of Babel and Macedonia and. The library of Alexandria, all the libraries of Pompeii for the matter, _every single monastery in Christendom_..."

"Oh posh, I hardly took every tome in Christendom. Too many of them were hymnbooks. Satanic prayers are much more dignified." He said. [3]

"You say that like you don't have a private collection of every type of Bible in existence, Aziraphale." Crowley smirked, which is to say he stretched his mouth in the closest thing an Angel of the Lord was metaphysically capable of smirking.

"Very well, I get your point." The demon named Aziraphale brushed the matter away with a wave of the hand. Every pigeon in a four foot radius fell over and died.

"Ups." He looked around guiltily, making sure no celestial being other than Crowley saw him doing such an undemoniac thing, and revived the pigeons with another wave.

"What?" he asked Crowley. "Birds must watch out for each other. Quid pro quo and all that. It's my owlish duty."

"Sure it is, demon. A bit like our Arrangement, no?"

Aziraphale sniffed disdainfully. "I wouldn't put you in equal footing as a bird, dear."

Honestly, Crowley thought. Bloody avians. Aziraphale had been impossible after the Greeks raised owls as symbols of divine wisdom, and that bird snobbishness had never gone away entirely.

"At least my wings are better kept than yours." He shot, watching Aziraphale's cheeks flush. He was no good at taking care of his wings, a double failing in a demon and an own. It made Crowley's fingers itch to groom them properly.

"Well, you're really not supposed to be so _vain_ about it. Or prideful."

"You're not supposed to revive pigeons."

"Which technically means I have to revive them."

"That's not how Downstairs law works, Greedy One."

"And you'll know a lot about law, Gardener? Did you learn that with your pretty weeds."

"They're not weeds! Besides, you have no ground to call us ignorants. My side knows how to use the television. And the ansaphone."

"They had to, didn't they? My side knows better than to use doves as messengers. Remember in Athens, what happened to St. Peter's head? Right in front of the samaritans too."

Crowley grimaced. It had been a humiliation for the Apostles to have their stand in leader shit on during a meeting for drumming up support, but he wasn't going to admit that. It was a matter of professional decency. But the remark annoyed him. He'd had plenty of hope in the fledgling church, and Aziraphale knew it.

"We have the french writers."

Aziraphale fell silent, seething.

"And the greeks, the romans. Shakespeare. Chaucer. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis are having a blast with Homer right now. But don't mind me. I'm sure you are very happy with...the Russians? Oh no, wait, we have Tolstoi too. Have fun with Nietzche."

"We have Dante." The demon bit out through a clenched smile. "And Byron."

"Nobody wanted Byron, you lost that one. Vitor Hugo wrote another book, you know? One guess who he dedicated it to."

That was the last straw. "That is utterly uncalled for! That man has a fixation on gardeners! It's unhealthy!" Aziraphale grumbled, passing a hand through feathery curls. Nothing got him flustered like when their wiling and thwarting involved literature. Nearby ducks flew off, quaking warnings to their fellows.

"You two have that in common, then."

The demon dropped the Nora Roberts grimoire.

"Ah." Crowley cleared his throat. "Um." he tried again, then gave up. Crowley closed his mouth with a click. He turned away his burning face, studying the pattern his scale-clad feet and prayed for Methraton to call him Upstairs. Surely they had to have forgiven him already for the printing press.

For a wild moment he thought Aziraphale was going to say something damning, like 'you've caught me there, dear' or 'you know me, I always like the first editions better.' Then Crowley would have to find some truth that would mask how very much he was lying, and hope Aziraphale let it go [4].

Aziraphale, bless him, damn him, played deaf. Balanced on his haunches, he picked up the book, but didn't move. The sun fell on him, an halo around his head, shining in the glasses, and Crowley knew that was not why he saw golden eyes behind the lenses. He adjusted his own glasses self consciously.

"It's not dented." He said, lifting the book for Crowley to see. The demon gave a smile, suddenly bashful, miracling away the dust. "Nothing ruined."

"No." Crowley said, voice wavering. "Only a bit roughened up. It's still the same inside."

Aziraphale got up. They stood in front of each other, looking at the ducks, the strolling couples with a leashed dog each, the clouds rolling closer. At each other, they only stole glances. The demon's wings were splotched, lips curled to hide a smile. Crowley's eyes met his and he bit his forked tongue, Grace flowing quickly in his bloodstream

It started raining.

They made the way out of the park leisurely, ignoring the humans cursing and running to cafés and eaves. Mud squelched under Crowley's appendages, the one that looked like slick boots, seeping through the white of his trousers. The fresh smell of rain filled the air like for the first time. It could have been the first time and it would have made no difference. It was still Crowley and Aziraphale caught under the downpour, borders blurred by the rain and the heady living smell of dying things.

"Say, one of my clients told me about a little Austrian cafe. They're supposed to have an applestüdel to sin for."

Aziraphale glanced at him from under his brand new tartan umbrella, searching a second  
meaning in the request. But for once there was no duplicity there, so he nodded and offered an arm.

Crowley took it almost without hesitation. Steps matching, they made to the emptying parking lot.

"We'll be taking your car, I think, my boy. I took the metropolitan on the way here."

"They call it the tube now, demon, and isn't that a little too plebeian for you?"

"The lack of space is unfortunate, but there's something to be said about the certainty of parallel lines meeting. It's all about ineffability, you see..."

 

* * *

 

[1] No force in Heaven, Hell or Scotland could change Crowley's opinion that tartan was the work of the Devil, or at least this specific minion of the Devil. 

 

[2] Rumor had it he once defeated a legion of Angels after they dog marked his precious copy of Aristoteles' Rhetoric. The Archangel Michael did not make any statements either confirming or denying.

 

[3] The demon in question was the author of Satanic Hymns, The Antibible, The Children's Book Of Demoniac Prayers and Praying to Hell: An Illuminated Guide.

 

[4] He wouldn't, of course. Crowley knew him, had known him After Crowley became The Gardener, The Good Serpent, The One That Protects From The Ground, and Before, before Aziraphale had been The Truth Thief, The Apple Eater, He Who Leaned On The Precipice and Jumped For The Sake of Knowledge; Aziraphale never let go of the truth. That was why he was such a good liar.

Crowley was a good liar as well. His brethren disliked him for that, among many other ways Crowley failed at being a proper angel. It was only Aziraphale that dragged his understanding into question, made him stumble trough half-truths. Sometimes it was too easy to trip on some inconvenient confession.

 

[5] It must be said that Crowley had only a very vague idea of what happened in the kind of book club that convened in church basements, other than that it was the birthing room of many low level sins. He also had never read anything of Nora Roberts'. He thought she was the pseudonym of a demon, maybe Aziraphale himself.

 


End file.
